Supper is ready: ratatouille on pasta, with spinach salad on the side / SOPHIE X. POLLAK, for the Free Press

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The idea of making ratatouille, a fabulous vegetable stew, usually slays me. It's too much trouble, who's got the time?

That changed a couple of weeks ago, when Lee Duberman, chef/owner of Ariel's in Brookfield, happened to mention she recently prepared ratatouille by baking it in a wood-fired oven. I don't have a wood-fired oven, but we've got a gas one: good enough.

I phoned Duberman back to make sure I had heard her correctly, and to ask a couple questions.

Yes, it was true — she had made baked ratatouille, a first for her, as well. Sure, my version would lack the over-the-top smokey flavor of hers, but it was worth a try.

Typically, you make ratatouille on the stove top, layering in the vegetables (and flavors) by cooking each ingredient separately and incrementally. Thus, the pain factor: You have to stand there cooking, adding, stirring, sort of thinking.

If you bake ratatouille, you cook all the vegetables at once, throwing them raw into an oven-proof pot with garlic and olive oil. Duberman used fresh herbs, and so did I. She suggested I toss them into the stew at the end, after removing the meal from the oven and before serving.

The height of harvest season — which coincides with Eat Local Week — seemed like the perfect time to make ratatouille. You can use what you have, making sure to include a few key veggies: eggplant, zuchinni, tomatoes.

We had a pile of fresh local vegetables, and I bought eggplant and tomatoes at the Lewis Creek Farm stand on a cold and rainy Saturday farmers market. To embellish the ratatouille, I decided to add shittake mushrooms, grown in Colchester.

Prep time, not including washing the vegetables: about ten minutes, or the first two songs on Bob Marley and the Wailers' album, "Legend." That's "Is This Love" and the live version of "No Woman, No Cry."

Process: Wash and cut the vegetables. Cut them in big, unfussy pieces - they'll shrink when cooking, but will hold together in a satisfactory form if they start big. Mince the garlic cloves.

Pour some olive oil in the bottom of a big casserole, add half the garlic, put in half the vegetables, a little sea salt, and stir lightly - combining the veggies; drizzle a bit more olive oil over the vegetables, add garlic and more salt (if desired), place remaining vegetables in the dish, toss lightly.

Cover and bake in pre-heated oven at 360 degrees for about an hour, till vegetables are tender but not squishy.

Chop fresh herbs — I used parsley, basil and oregano, sprinkle on the ratatouille.

Serve with pasta, rice or another grain; serves 6 to 8.

Brownies

To amuse ourselves on a rainy weekend, we baked brownies. Let's call them local enough — butter, eggs, flour from Vermont.The recipe, simple and perfect, comes from my grandmother. I'm not sure where she got it and it's too late to ask. Make these brownies to celebrate the end of eat local week. Liberate yourself: Use Baker's chocolate and Domino sugar.

Ingredients:

Process: Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan and pour into a mixing bowl; when cool, stir in the sugar and add vanilla; beat in the eggs, one at a time, add flour and stir till the ingredients are well mixed. Bake in buttered pan for 20 minutes at 375 degrees. Cool before cutting. (Snitch a corner piece hot)